Myles Brown

4 responses to Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand

First and foremost i should mention I don’t follow basketball all that closely. I’m a huge baseball and football fan and all things Minnesota. So as an “outsider” its a little harder to gauge exact value of a certain player but as a sports fan i can make a pretty good guess. This also means i can look at basketball more as a business then a sport because I dont have the type of “Fanatics” or bias one would have for a certain player. From that perspective Kahn has made some really good decisions. People like Bill simmons have and will always find some way to make a big deal out of something. I know he said he could see Rubio and Flynn on the court together and we all know he tried to get Rubio endorsements and what not to get him over right away. so that hurts his credibility with what he said about seeing Rubio stuck in Spain and needing a PG. This team has nothing but potential and options. Its what caused me to spend time the day before the draft posting on the LA bloggers…well blog. Because like a usual ESPN columnist he wrote something without any sort of fact. Minny as done nothing but collect young players with potential and open cap space so trading Love and the 2 pick made absolutely no sense unless Kahn was bipolar and was about to do the opposite of himself. about an our later he came out and said he wasnt ever even close to thinking about trading Love but that didnt stop the LAL blogger cuz not an hr later he claimed now the Twolves were after Bynum for Love AND the 2 pick. It was funny because all the LAL fans started creating lineups with Rubio Love Williams and Kobe. So if other teams are dreaming of our line up he must be doing something right. I think as a Twolves fan we all are looking for that one superstar of at least reliable SG that would cement the foundation. The one thing that i havent seen mentioned though that may be a sore spot for the wolves though is what if Rubio brings those defensive prowls that ive been reading about because then people might be dreaming about him and Brewer and that combo would have went a long way to helping out the defensive woes. As for Bill i think he proved he doesnt deserve to write anything just by the main fact he would ask a question and all Kahn had to do is repeat him self to answer but i hold a little bias in this because this last winter he wrote an article titled “Five teams with money to spend this FA and its not the usual suspects” (baseball) then went on to list the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Tigers and Dodgers. You tell me if you see them spending money in FA.But like Kahn said ESPN seems to have a habit of letting people produce articles with out the smallest crumb of a fact anyone else remember when they posted a pick of LeBron in a Knicks uniform on the main page and said it was all but a done deal?

Yeah, that was a pretty good podcast. I had listened to it yesterday. Kahn gave mostly honest answers, and I’m surprised he ever agreed to be on it in the first place.

Still, some stuff Kahn says bothers me because he just sounds like he thinks he’s soooooo much smarter than everyone else. He’s not, and it’s annoying. But at least he seemed mostly honest.

Simmons is also kinda annoying in how he always rips Kahn/the TWolves, but I guess it’s been mostly deserved. I mean, Kahn TOTALLY screwed up the entire Flynn situation by drafting him. And admitting that he was above Curry and DeRozan?!? Ugh, that’s such failure. Did ANY other team have Flynn above those guys for the draft? I doubt it.

And what about Simmons renegging on driving to the first TWolves game this season since Rubio is here now? That’s weak that he’s not gonna do it. He’d build up a lot of goodwill if he followed through on that. Lame.

I enjoyed the podcast. Thank you for posting the link as I might not have seen it otherwise. I thought Kahn came off really well and as professionally as he could, all things considered…of course I find Kahn refreshing in that regard so I may be a little biased. He does appear sincere in his explainations and I appreciate hearing that information. I found the part with Al’s agent immediately calling him with Al “shook up” about the rumor kind of weird though. You’d like you think that an NBA player would be told/taught not to trust what ESPN throws up on it’s ticker (or SportsCenter for that matter) since noone really needs a reliable source to post “breaking news” or anything anymore. I think Kahn was honest and contrite. I really appreciated more insight (without the Strip or Pioneer Press posts) into what Kahn is doing with the Rambis situation…at least it makes more sense as to the process of what’s going on.

For what it’s worth, if you go down on ESPN’s NBA Draft page and click on the link to the 2009 draft, Flynn was above both Curry and DeRozan on Chad Ford’s Big Board heading into the draft. I remember several other mock draft sites having Flynn listed above Curry and DeRozan. In retrospect is this a mistake? Yes. Was it also a mistake to draft two true point guards and say they could play together? Absolutely. (I think it was probably a bit of revisionist history in the podcast to say that Flynn was drafted because they knew Rubio would be overseas for a couple of years. The conventional wisdom is that Kahn, who had only been on the job for a month and may not have had much time to contact Rubio’s camp anyway about the possibilities he could buy out his contract, assumed that Rubio would be picked before #5, and that the Wolves would pair either Tyreke Evans or James Harden, whichever one fell to them, with Flynn for our backcourt of the future. When Rubio was the one available, Kahn panicked.) But putting the Rubio pick aside, I can live with Flynn going #6.

I liked the podcast and feel slightly better about Kahn as GM now. Yes, he is too arrogant by far, but that’s not news. At least he took some responsibility for the team composition. And, it sounds like he has better comprehension of how to put together a team than I previously would have given him credit for. May not work ultimately, but at least there seems to be a plan. Such a change from the McHale years. I wish Simmons had asked Kahn why, since the Wolves supposedly have the best international scouts in the league, we were selling all of our second round picks instead of being the ones to stash Europeans. But, I think we all know this was probably directed from Glen Taylor to make money for the bottom line. Oh well, sad but true.